Going too Far?

The primary subject of the District 150 school board meeting last
August had been school discipline, but the Peoria, Ill., residents
queued before the microphone at the open forum had something altogether
different on their minds. As they spoke, one after the other, the
school board members looked on wearily. They had heard the same
statements intoned time and time again, often by the very same people,
ever since an advisory committee had proposed a new comprehensive sex
education curriculum--a curriculum that would include the topics of
birth control, homosexuality, masturbation, and sexual fantasy.

The proposed curriculum had been a big story for several weeks, and
a number of locally prominent people had weighed in with their opinions
in the city newspaper, The Peoria Journal Star. In an article headlined
"Ex-school chief condemns plan for sex studies,'' former Superintendent
Harry Whitaker was quoted as saying, "Unwed mothers and illegitimate
children are due to a lack of morality, not of education. My gosh, kids
know what causes babies.'' Jerry Klein, a longtime Journal Star
columnist, attacked the program as "value neutral,'' writing, "Sex
education ought...to scare those who fool around with [sex], just as
driver education, with its pictures of graphic wrecks and dismembered
victims, scares kids out of driving crazily or drunk.''

To the program's critics, Peoria Superintendent John Strand replied
that the proposed curriculum did indeed stress abstinence and that
parents always had the option of withdrawing their children from all or
any part of the course.

As a Peoria resident and education writer, I initially followed the
story more out of duty than interest, for I suspected that it was much
ado about nothing--one of those interminable conflicts in which nervous
school officials were caught in the middle. Although the curriculum
committee had included a mix of people, from a Roman Catholic priest to
the director of a Planned Parenthood clinic, it was undoubtedly
impossible to please everyone. Nodding to one side, officials pushed
for a curriculum that sensibly stressed abstinence; acquiescing to the
other, they agreed to include a handful of topics that would inevitably
offend some. I had no strong feelings on the issue but generally sided
with Superintendent Strand: Most of the curriculum did, as he had said,
stress abstinence. Furthermore, while I wondered about the
appropriateness of such topics as masturbation, it seemed hard to argue
against the inclusion of birth control when Peoria had a teenage
pregnancy rate that surpassed Chicago's.

Most of the speakers at the school board meeting read rather
manufactured-sounding statements, and I was about to leave when a
woman, in a surprising burst of enthusiasm, stood up and praised the
committee for its wisdom in proposing comprehensive sex education. She
had raised five daughters in District 150 schools and was distressed by
the fact that the abstinence-minded people apparently wanted to "impose
their moral codes.'' Too much education, she continued, could never be
a bad thing, and the schools should be teaching "the only values that
really count--personal values.''

Another woman took the microphone. Introducing herself as Kathy
Leiby, she said she hadn't planned on speaking this night but now felt
compelled to do so. It was absolutely essential that the board
understand the viewpoint of parents like her. "Knowledge isn't
enough,'' she said, because teenagers have the mind-set that bad things
are not going to happen to them. "I know,'' she added, "because I was
once an unwed mother.''

There was something both urgent and pleading in her manner that
captivated me, so I called her a couple of days later. As small
children screamed in the background, Leiby told me that she had been
campaigning against the proposed curriculum virtually nonstop, having
started out by calling total strangers out of the phone book.

"We object,'' she said, "to the whole notion of telling students,
'You make the decision, you know what's best'-- the whole 'information
only' context. 'Here's a bunch of choices,' the school board is saying,
'abstinence, condoms, or nothing. You choose the best option. We're
going to give you all the information, but we're not going to include
guidelines, parameters.' ''

Leiby continued: "You say the word 'abstinence' in this community,
and they say you're trying to legalize morality, to encourage
ignorance. But we must address why these kids are sexually active in
the first place. Just what are the pressures they're dealing with? I
look at these teenage girls and think that was me 10 years ago. We've
got to be more personal in our approach. It's not just a matter of
condoms, statistics. There's a whole emotional aspect we have to deal
with.''

It was true that the recommendations for the new sex education
curriculum lacked "an emotional aspect,'' whatever that may precisely
mean. The proposal, which I had picked up at the superintendent's
office, had the exaggerated, somewhat fatuous neutrality of all such
committee reports, listing objectives such as, "The student will
understand that abstinence outside of marriage is the expected norm in
society and is a positive and valuable life force.'' But while
abstinence is emphasized, the reader is never told outright that it's
the best choice; instead, we're told that it's "an important value to
be taught.''

The report, then, is in tone and in content fastidiously
nonjudgmental and morally unobtrusive--the very things that people such
as Leiby find so objectionable. The stated goal for the new curriculum
is simply "to provide students with the knowledge and skills with which
to make responsible decisions about their social relationships and
sexual activity.'' In keeping with this air of reasonableness, we're
told that "homosexual, heterosexual, and bisexual people are alike in
many ways,'' that "sexual feelings, fantasies, and desires are
normal,'' and that "some boys and girls masturbate; others do
not--either is normal.'' In fact, much of the report is concerned with
normalcy, as if the curriculum committee's overriding but unspoken goal
was to reassure students that their sexuality was normal, however it
may manifest itself. But the problem--as the school board and school
officials were beginning to find out--was that what is "normal'' to one
person is morally abominable to another.

Leiby posed a question that circled back to this normalcy issue: If
the committee's mission was to reduce sexually transmitted diseases and
teenage pregnancy, why did the committee include in its curriculum
masturbation, homosexuality, and sexual fantasies? Leiby said she had
asked Marilyn Ketay, both a school board and committee member, this
very question. "She said, 'Do you realize that we have children coming
to school right now who feel different from other children because
their parents make them feel guilty about masturbation?' The key word
she used is 'parents,' as if we parents aren't allowed to effect a
certain kind of behavior in our homes. 'Who are you,' I asked her, 'to
say what's acceptable?' She said, 'Masturbation is a natural human act.
Don't you think it's normal, natural?' I said, 'Well, then we don't
need to teach it.' ''

I reached Marilyn Ketay at her home and asked her about the
inclusion of the controversial topics. She first suggested that I
contact the school district's lawyer but then tried to answer the
question. "Because we might save someone from committing suicide,'' she
said. "I mean, kids have problems their parents don't talk about. There
are people who do not believe that homosexuals and lesbians are normal.
Do you kill yourself if you are? And as far as sexual fantasies are
concerned, you tell me a kid or adult that doesn't have them. Should
they think it's a disgrace? It isn't; it's a normal thing.''

Ketay sounded perturbed with critics of the new proposal. The same
six people, she said, spoke at board meetings over and over again. "One
of these people is against us using the word 'penis' or 'vagina' in
primary school. I have a problem with that. How can it be trouble to
call something by its right name?''

Another committee member, Cindy Marvin, director of epidemiology at
the Peoria Health Department, shared Ketay's viewpoint, saying it was
important for adolescents to understand that feeling attraction for
samesex individuals is normal and did not necessarily indicate that one
was homosexual. Then she added a reason for the inclusion of the
controversial topics that seemed, upon reflection, logical and even
obvious. "AIDS has really changed the face of things,'' she said.
"There was a time when you'd never think of talking to a kid about
sexual fantasy or masturbation. Now, if you talk to teenagers in
programs where you're also teaching AIDS prevention, you teach them
that fantasy and masturbation are ways to express sexuality without
contracting AIDS.''

I asked her if others on the committee had felt this way; others
had, she said, although it was not unanimous. Perhaps, Marvin added,
the committee should have included a dissenting minority report.

Looking back through the sex education proposal, I found an
instructional objective I had somehow passed over: "The student will
understand that some couples may engage in mutual masturbation as a way
to express sexual feelings while avoiding or decreasing the risks of
pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.''

This mutual masturbation is often referred to by sex educators as
"outercourse'': a neologism denoting sexual activity that is
satisfactory--that is, leading to orgasm--and yet non-coital.
Organizations such as SIECUS, the powerful New York-based Sex
Information and Education Council of the United States, sometimes
suggest outercourse as a way for teenagers to satisfy themselves
sexually while circumventing the hazards of sexual intercourse. "Young
people can understand,'' a SIECUS newsletter states, "that there are
ways to give and receive sexual pleasure and not have
intercourse.''

While this--along with the attempt to make teenagers feel
"normal''-- explained the presence of certain topics, it didn't make
them any less controversial. For if public school educators are to talk
about outercourse as a kind of sexual-relief valve, they would not only
be in jeopardy of appearing to move away from their claimed emphasis on
abstinence, but they also would be entering with their students into a
new discourse--a discourse of sex as pleasure that is light years
removed from the age-old sublimations of high school clubs and
athletics.

I was on the verge of looking beyond the Peoria situation into what
was going on with sex education on the national front when I received a
phone call from Kathy Leiby. When I had spoken with her earlier, she
had felt rushed and disorganized, and she wasn't sure that she had
gotten her point across. Now, she had something she wanted to tell me.
"I got pregnant when I was in high school,'' she said. "My boyfriend, a
medical school student, kept telling me, 'Have an abortion, have an
abortion.' It was something I really didn't want to do, but, the more I
thought about it, the more logical having an abortion seemed. I was,
after all, completely unprepared to have a child. So that's what I told
my mother--that I would have an abortion. A few days later, I was lying
on the couch, waiting for my sister to take me to the clinic. 'Let's
go,' my sister said when she walked in. But my mother said, 'No, she's
not going. She's not having an abortion.'

"This is what the school district ignores: real people in real
circumstances. We need to talk to students as human beings. Giving them
knowledge just isn't enough.''

The more controversial aspects of the District 150 proposal, I
learned, were modeled after the SIECUS Guidelines for Comprehensive
Sexuality Education, a 52-page document that outlines, in mind-boggling
detail, a supposedly ideal K-12 sex education curriculum. Since the
guidelines were published in 1991, SIECUS has distributed more than
12,000 copies, many to school districts that have, to various extents,
used them to formulate their own curricula. Those who agitate for an
abstinence-based curriculum, or for the elimination of sex education
altogether, think of SIECUS as the Reagan administration once thought
of the former Soviet Union--the great evil empire, its guidelines
indicative of a moral bankruptcy that is infecting the entire public
school system.

Kathleen Sullivan heads Project Respect, a Chicago-based
organization that publishes a high school curriculum and text called
Facing Reality and a middle school curriculum and text called Sex
Respect. One of Project Respect's typical messages to students is, "Sex
on credit: Play now, pay later.'' Echoing others I spoke with later,
Sullivan told me that "homosexuality and masturbation are all part of
[the SIECUS] philosophy, namely that sex is strictly recreational, no
big deal, and that if sex is recreational, then any kind of sex is OK.
SIECUS has said in the past that one must separate pregnancy from sex
and get rid of the whole idea of procreation.''

There are many things about SIECUS that its critics
attack--including its generous federal funding--but perhaps nothing so
much as its perceived "nondirective'' philosophy, a philosophy that
encourages students to find and express their own values while
resisting any so-called authoritarian attempts to impose values upon
them. The nondirective approach, as its critics see it, is but a rehash
of the influential values-clarification movement of the 1960s and '70s,
which (in what sometimes seemed like a parody of bad psychotherapy)
encouraged students to explore their feelings about any number of
issues. Feelings are venerated; there is little talk in the
values-clarification materials of the need to reason.

The once highly esteemed 1973 text Values Clarification asks
students hundreds of questions, such as, "Would you approve of a
marriage between homosexuals?'' and "Have you had problems so bad you
wished you could die?'' Some of the questions are almost comically
absurd, such as, "Which of these people would you have the most trouble
introducing to your friend--[transsexual] Christine Jorgenson, a
racially mixed couple, or the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan?'' In
the valuesclarification scheme of things, the teacher becomes a
facilitator, a kind of benign therapist. "The teacher must be careful
not to influence his students' choices,'' the text admonishes. "A wide
spread of opinion along the continuum usually means that the teacher
has encouraged good thinking about the issue.''

While values clarification claims to esteem tolerance--"Please
respect each other's right to live differently, feel differently, think
differently, value differently''--it appears in fact to be a caricature
of it. For reading through the values-clarification literature, one
begins to see that tolerance is all too often confused with the
granting of license--the ideal person, more than anything else, is
acquiescent in all moral matters.

In some ways, it's true that SIECUS has taken on the
valuesclarification language, if not position. An objective listed in
the council's guidelines, for example, states that the learner should
"identify and live according to one's values.'' In a recent issue of
the council's publication, SIECUS Report, what the organization calls
"fear-based curricula'' is criticized because "opportunities are not
provided for students to explore their own values about premarital
sexual behavior.'' Betsy Wacker, SIECUS director of public policy, told
me, "We try to be nonjudgmental; we recognize that there are many
different kinds of people out there, different expressions of
sexuality. We are convinced that people need all the information,
presented age appropriately. Our assumption is that people will bring
the information back to their communities, their families. But it's not
up to us to decide which people should get what information.''

Yet I question whether SIECUS is really as "value neutral'' as some
of its critics charge. In the guidelines, we read that "sexuality
includes physical, ethical, spiritual, and psychological dimensions,''
that "sexual relationships should never be coercive or exploitative,''
and that "premature involvement in sexual behaviors poses risks.''
There is in the SIECUS materials an earnestness about sexual matters
that seems far removed from moral lassitude.

It seems to me, rather, that SIECUS has values to which its
opponents simply object. Chief among these values, according to the
group's mission statement and guidelines, is the importance of
conveying sexuality as "a natural and healthy part of life,'' be it
heterosexual or homosexual expression. The goal of comprehensive sex
education, a SIECUS fact sheet reads, "is to assist children in
understanding a positive view of sexuality....''

Expanding upon this viewpoint in a recent SIECUS Report article,
SIECUS Executive Director Debra Haffner writes, "Adolescent sexuality
is not by definition dangerous, harmful, sinful, or painful.'' To
support her assertion, Haffner cites a study claiming that a majority
of teenagers feel positively about their sexual experiences and that
sexually experienced youth generally report higher levels of
self-esteem. She concludes by suggesting that sex educators should
concentrate not on limiting adolescents' sexual experiences but on
reducing the incidence of unprotected sex, as "adolescents who are
capable of forming healthy sexual relationships must be
supported.''

The SIECUS emphasis on a positive view of sexuality is evident in
its guidelines. Children in early elementary school, ages 5 through 8,
the guidelines state, should learn that "both girls and boys have body
parts that feel good when touched'' and that "some men and women are
homosexual, which means they will be attracted to and fall in love with
someone of the same gender.'' Older children, ages 9 through 12, should
be told that masturbation is a common way to experience pleasure and
that "homosexual relationships can be as fulfilling as heterosexual
relationships.'' High school students should be informed that common
sexual behaviors include "sharing erotic literature or art,
bathing/showering together, and oral, vaginal, or anal
intercourse.''

Regardless of how one feels about SIECUS and its guidelines, it is
clear that a school district adopting certain aspects of the guidelines
is going to find itself in the midst of unwanted controversy, as
recently fired New York City schools chancellor Joseph Fernandez
discovered when he agreed to let a number of schools distribute
condoms. Parents are likely to continue to object to SIECUS-based
curricula and the schools that offer them for two salient reasons: One,
such curricula unavoidably feature a discourse of pleasure that
emphasizes noncoital sexual activity, or "outercourse,'' and the
meticulous use of condoms as ways to escape the hazards of pregnancy;
and two, "comprehensive'' sex education, by definition, means exposing
primary school children to information that would have been unthinkable
even a decade ago.

A case in point is the controversial K-3 Learning About Family Life
curriculum, published last year by Rutgers University Press and
currently in use at more than 70 school districts nationwide. The
classroom materials and texts, modeled in part on the SIECUS
guidelines, frankly discuss topics such as masturbation ("It's OK to
masturbate,'' a kindly male teacher tells a guilt-ridden boy in one
section); anatomy ("Clitoris,'' a teacher explains to the children, "is
a small sensitive part that only girls have, and sometimes it makes you
feel good''); and sexual intercourse ("Together the woman and man place
the penis inside the woman's vagina''). While the latter is discussed
in a subtext of love and affection, it is not discussed in the context
of marriage--something guaranteed to further vex those wanting an
abstinence-only message.

Learning About Family Life is also comprehensive in that it
encourages children, in the valuesclarification mode, to explore their
feelings about everything from death and AIDS to racism and divorce.
While the aim is to make children comfortable with their feelings, one
also gets a sense that educators are taking sensitive subjects that
were once within the domain of the family and institutionalizing them
within the school. When a boy, for instance, says, "We never talk about
that stuff [genitals] in my house,'' the teacher reassures him, "Well,
you can talk about it in school, Brian.''

Many parents are bound to see this sort of thing as intrusive.
Whether in Peoria or New York City, comprehensive sex education, with
its emphasis on pleasure, contraception, and expression of feelings, is
almost certain to further alienate large numbers of people from the
public schools, redoubling the all too common charges of moral
relativism.

If advocates of comprehensive sex education see sex as a "natural
and healthy part of living,'' proponents of the abstinence-only
movement see sex, outside of the realm of marriage, as invariably
destructive, causing what one abstinenceonly instructor called "jagged
edges''--physical, emotional, and spiritual traumas. In the high school
text, Facing Reality, published by Project Respect, the student is
asked in the very first chapter to "list as many possible harmful
consequences of premarital sexual activity as you can. Don't forget to
include the effects on personality.''

In Project Respect's middle school text, Sex Respect--the most
popular of all abstinenceonly curricula--students are asked to list the
differences between animals and humans, the point being that people
don't have to act on their sexual drives. "As humans,'' students are
told, "we are able to practice self-control.'' The text is also full of
advice ("Keep all of your clothes/ All the way on/ All of the time''),
pep talk ("Be confident, be a virgin''), and less-than-memorable
slogans ("Don't be a louse, wait for your spouse'' and "Pet your dog,
not your date'').

The essence of human nature in these curricula seems to be defined
in terms of self-control-- a self-control that nondirective approaches,
with their desensitizing techniques, supposedly break down. This, at
least, was the claim of Onalee McGraw, executive director of the
Educational Guidance Institute, founded in 1983 to "promote directive,
abstinence-based, family-centered prevention education programs.'' A
SIECUS publication lists the institute as one of 15 far-right,
fearbased, abstinence-only programs.

A national lecturer and former policy analyst at the conservative
Heritage Foundation, McGraw told me that SIECUS believes that people
have inevitable sexual needs and desires they are incapable of leaving
unfulfilled. "So you have,'' she said, "Deborah Haffner arguing that we
must encourage kids to embark upon 'outercourse' because she believes
that the individual cannot contain the sexual urge. What we're arguing,
on the other hand, is that human beings have free will so that they can
control themselves and decide that they won't go out on a date to have
sex. But SIECUS argues that these drives are inexorable; they then
actually argue that these young teenagers can lie together with no
clothes on and not bring things to a natural conclusion.''

McGraw continued: "Mary Calderone, who once ran SIECUS, was a
disciple of the Kinseyian view of sexuality--the whole idea that you
have to give kids information, that if a kid in the 2nd grade doesn't
know he has a penis and it's spelled p-e-n-is, he'll be distorted,
unhappy, unable to make good choices. But our own guidelines say you
don't present anything dealing with human sexuality before the 7th or
8th grade. Below that level, you're dealing with diverse variables,
and, if you present explicit sexual messages, you disturb other normal
social-psychological parts because the child cannot yet integrate his
or her sexuality. I can give you an example of a very precocious girl
in the 4th grade who saw one of those films in which sperm is swimming
up the canal of the vagina. The little girl, precocious as she was,
perceived that these things were in the water and that she could no
longer go swimming in a pool. She thought sperm in water would swim up
her vagina and get her pregnant.''

McGraw told me that SIECUS, in part, trains sex education teachers
by showing them pictures of the female and male genitals and by having
them say the words "penis'' and "vagina'' over and over again until
they feel comfortable. These teachers, in turn, train students not to
laugh or become embarrassed when they are presented with sexually
explicit material. "They aim to make students comfortable,'' McGraw
said. "But we view this as desensitization.''

It is true that in many of the curricula I looked at, there is an
almost stubborn insistence on having students state over and over
"correct'' terms for body parts. Sometimes this is more or less
unavoidable, as in ETR Associates' Reducing the Risk, which teaches
students an array of details about contraception and ways to avoid
sexually transmitted diseases. But in other materials, the aim is
clearly to have children speak as clinically and matter-of-factly as
possible about the body and its functions. In the Learning About Family
Life materials, for example, the following exchange between a teacher
and a girl is presented after the girl has said "tummy'':

"You know, many children and grown-ups, too, say 'tummy' for the
front part of us between our chest and the top of our legs. But all of
that is really your abdomen. One thing in your abdomen is your
stomach-- and that's why people say 'tummy.' '' "Like tummyache,''
Julie says. "Right. But in school we want to learn the most accurate
words for our body parts, and so you should say...'' "Stomachache,''
Julie smiles.

At first glance, this exchange seems innocuous enough, but it soon
becomes increasingly clear that it has a purpose--namely, as McGraw
said, to make children comfortable with naming sexual body parts and
functions. Two chapters after the above exchange, children are
comfortably exchanging such words as "vulva'' and "vagina.''

This calls to mind a sex education class I recently sat in on at a
middle school in Madison, Wis. During my visit, students were asked to
match terms ("vagina,'' "testes,'' "semen,'' "clitoris,'' etc.) written
on index cards with their correct definitions, also on index cards. As
boys and girls walked around the room matching terms and definitions, I
felt distinctly uncomfortable, even though I was only an observer.
After class, I told the two teachers that I would find it very
disconcerting to carry out such an activity in a mixedsex classroom.
"You get used to it,'' one teacher said. "You desensitize
yourself.''

Is the naming of sexual parts, then, an example of desensitization?
It is if one assumes that students should remain ill at ease with such
frank expression, that discomfort with sexual matters is a sign of
moral strength. If one sides with SIECUS, however, one believes that
easy familiarity is not so much a sign of desensitization as an
indication of students finally becoming appropriately comfortable with
their sexuality. Both sides, then, want to inculcate students with
their own views regarding sexuality. If the SIECUS materials sometimes
seem, despite proponents' claims to the contrary, to mechanize sex, to
give it the heart and soul of an internal combustion engine, the other
side, the abstinence-only forces, seems less than realistic in
idealizing sex within the domain of marriage. Do adults, much less
teenagers, truly believe that sex belongs only in marriage? Does such a
claim have inevitable religious overtones, overtones that are
inappropriate in the public schools? And what about the many
teenagers--somewhere near 50 percent, according to most studies--who
are already engaging in sexual intercourse? Is a "secondary virginity''
message--"You can do the right thing and stop having sex''--strong
enough to protect young people from the attending dangers of pregnancy
and AIDS?

Both the SIECUS and the abstinence-only approaches to sex education
obviously have severe limitations that are bound to engender further
controversy. As noted above, comprehensive sex education, in which the
school takes on everything from perceived homophobia to gender
inequality, will be unacceptable to many parents. And as more people
become aware of what I have called "a discourse of pleasure,'' the more
likely it is that public schools will be attacked for a supposed lack
of values.

Abstinence-based education, on the other hand, while having obvious
appeal to parents, is hampered by its near total avoidance of certain
subjects. Its "we'll teach them abstinence or nothing at all'' attitude
means that any relevant discussion of contraception will be omitted.
While the emphasis upon abstinence makes good sense for younger
students who have not yet been sexually active, the efficacy of the
"secondary virginity'' approach for older and sexually experienced
students seems highly questionable.

Between the nondirective and directive approaches, which encompass
the comprehensive and abstinence-only programs, are a number of mostly
newer programs that attempt to bridge the extremes. These programs are
comprehensive in that they typically provide information on
contraception and HIV but directive in that they make an especially
strong case for abstinence.

A case in point is the "Postponing Sexual Involvement'' program
offered at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, a program that evolved
from a very different kind of sex education effort the hospital
launched in the mid-1970s. The original program was centered upon a
knowledge-based approach; students, mostly from the hospital's
low-income population, were provided with comprehensive information on
contraception and the steps involved in decisionmaking. An early
evaluation of the program, though, indicated that it was ineffective in
changing sexual behavior; students were no more likely to refrain from
sexual intercourse or to use contraceptives than were students who had
not participated in the program.

The hospital staff concluded-- in a finding that rather uncannily
supports Kathy Leiby's intuition--that knowledge was not enough.
Factual knowledge and information about how to make good decisions, the
research revealed, had no impact upon students' behavior. The problem,
the researchers surmised, was that adolescents responded not to
knowledge but to peer pressure.

The staff then began to develop the current program, which is based
upon the "social influence'' or "social inoculation'' theory. In
essence, the theory proclaims that an inability to withstand peer
pressures--not a lack of information--causes certain behaviors. As a
result, students in the restructured program are taught how to resist
social pressures--in short, how to say "no'' to sexual activity. Among
other activities, the students watch a series of videos depicting ways
to confront various kinds of peer pressures.

"Postponing Sexual Involvement'' is now 10 years old, and research
indicates that the program has been effective, at least in helping
girls who have not been sexually active remain so. (The program,
unfortunately, has had no impact upon the behavior of students who had
sexual intercourse prior to participation in the program.)

The "social inoculation'' model is prevalent in a number of other
programs and published curricula, including Reducing The Risk, which
makes intensive use of role-playing. Students, in staged encounters,
practice resisting such entreaties as, "If you really loved me, you
would do it.'' Still, Reducing the Risk, as a comprehensive approach
that also emphasizes correct use of contraceptives, is likely to
receive heavy parental criticism. Many parents will see as overly
suggestive teacher demonstrations replete with such instructions as,
"Hold the tip of the condom to squeeze out air and to leave some extra
room for the semen.'' Furthermore, such programs seem somewhat of an
imposition upon lessthan-enthusiastic students who are, after all, a
captive audience.

It is risky to draw conclusions about the efficacy of various sex
education programs, especially since research conducted by one group so
often contradicts research by another. But if any conclusion can be
drawn, I believe it is that knowledge indeed is not enough. What
compelling research we do have indicates that information in and of
itself does not alter youthful behavior.

Of course, the inefficacy of factual knowledge can hardly be
surprising. Most people, especially impulsive adolescents, don't act
after having carefully analyzed information. How one behaves or
misbehaves sexually--empa- thetically or exploitatively, cautiously or
impulsively--depends, as in all human activities, less on acquired
knowledge than on character, something slowly acquired over years of
education, both in and out of school. If teachers are to have a real
impact upon their students--and not just in sex education--they must do
so as more than mere providers of knowledge. They must somehow reach
students on a moral and emotional plane as well as on an intellectual
one. They must, as Kathy Leiby said, "talk to students as human
beings.''

Sitting in on various sex education classes and studying various
curricula, watching teachers and videos impart information about
everything from human reproduction to the "normalcy'' of masturbation
and homosexual desires, I couldn't help thinking of educator John
Goodlad's landmark 1984 book, A Place Called School. Having compiled
exhaustive research based on visits to countless schools and
classrooms, Goodlad writes that "young humans come to be viewed only as
students valued primarily for their academic aptitude and industry
rather than as individual persons preoccupied with the physical,
social, and personal needs unique to their circumstances and stage of
life.'' Of classrooms, he later adds, "the emotional tone is neither
harsh nor punitive nor warm and joyful; it might be described most
accurately as flat.''

As I was finishing up my research for this story, I visited Peoria's
nonprofit Hult Education Center, where bus loads of public school
children arrive to receive health and sex education in accordance with
state mandates. The center, with colorful displays and life-size
electronic models, is a marvel of showmanship and efficiency--a kind of
educational Disneyland. In one lecture hall, "TAM'' (Transparent
Anatomical Manikin) "speaks'' of her uterus as "a special place where
babies grow''; in another is "Mary the Mandible,'' a giant jaw with
teeth. In yet another lecture hall are models of the male and female
reproductive systems and a display in which sperm represented as
flashing red lights blink their way through the fallopian tube.
"Experienced staff,'' a brochure reads, "comfortably handles all issues
in a factual, professional manner.''

There is nothing about the Hult Center that is the least bit
offensive. It succeeds in carrying out its mission: to present
sometimes sensitive information in an informative and entertaining
manner. But there is something about the very efficiency of the center
that makes me wonder if too much sex education is, as Goodlad might put
it, "flat.'' Stripped of its emotion, mystery and allure, sex presented
as supposedly objective knowledge seems harmless, even mundane. And
that is a view of sex that may, in the long run, be doing our children
an injustice.

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